Otter Stretch

Earn your screen time.

Your apps stay locked until you stretch. A few minutes a day, built for stiff people, not flexible ones.

Prop your phone and hold a stretch you can keep: your body steers an otter through the kelp, or watch yourself on camera as it tracks you. Never recorded.

Get it on the App Store For iPhone and iPad. Free to start.

Camera view: a woman in a triangle pose, the points the app tracks drawn on her joints, a time ring round the picture and the word Steady. Not recorded.
  1. The standing quad's tutorial screen: the starting position drawn beside the stretch, three how-to lines, and a diagram of where the phone goes.

    Prop the phone

    On the floor, angled up a bit, six feet away and side-on to you — or facing you, for a few. Every stretch shows you the picture first.

  2. The setup screen: a man folding into a toe touch on his own camera picture, the points the app tracks drawn on his joints. Shown on screen, never recorded.

    Get into the stretch

    It talks you through it out loud, because you’re across the room by then and often looking at the floor. It shows you your own camera picture, so finding your spot is easy. Never recorded.

  3. Mid-round in the coral reef: the otter, in a beanie and scarf, swimming through a gap, with the timer and gates cleared at the top and the camera picture of a man's toe touch in the lower corner.

    Hold it

    The gap sits at the depth you chose. Hold steady and the otter glides through. Drift, and it bumps the kelp.

Lock the apps you lose time to.

Pick them, and they stay shut until you’ve stretched.

A minute of stretching opens them for ten minutes, or choose longer for either. It counts the time you hold a stretch, never your score, so a stiff body unlocks as fast as a flexible one. If you can’t stretch right now, one button opens them anyway after thirty seconds.

Apple’s Screen Time does the locking, and Otter Stretch never learns which apps you chose. Part of Otter Stretch Full.

  1. The Unlock screen: TikTok and Instagram wrapped in chains under a lock, 0:00 of 1:00 stretched, and a button to start a routine.

    Locked until you stretch

  2. The end of a routine: the chains gone from the same two apps, Apps unlocked!, and fifteen whiskers earned.

    A minute later, open for ten

It never asks you to go deeper.

Points come from how steadily you hold the spot you picked. Depth earns nothing.

Pushing past your range is how beginners get hurt, so the game doesn’t pay for it. It only makes you wobble, and wobbling is what costs you gaps.

It is also what the research says. A 2024 review of 77 stretching studies found that people who held a gentle stretch gained as much range as people who pushed to the point of pain.

It starts with what’s tight.

  • Can’t touch my toes
  • Stiff hips
  • Stiff lower back
  • Tight quads
  • Tight glutes
  • Tight inner thighs

Pick what bothers you and it builds a three-stretch routine named after it. Or pick one stretch.

What you get for turning up

Thirty stretches

Stretches and balance poses, standing, on a chair and on the floor, each one shown and spoken before the clock starts. A session is one stretch or a routine of a few, and either way it is under ten minutes.

Standing stretches

Standing poses

On a chair

On the floor

Your iPhone’s camera wasn’t built for stretching.

We taught it.

Apple’s body tracking expects someone standing up. Fold over your knees or kneel on the floor, and it loses you.

So we recorded real stretching sessions and replayed them. We fixed what our algorithm got wrong. Then we did it again, round after round. We tested it with teenagers, Division I athletes, middle-aged adults and seniors. That’s why Otter Stretch keeps up with you.

What regular stretching does, measured.

A muscle held for about thirty seconds, a few times a day, is measurably looser within weeks, and a gentle hold gains as much as a hard one. Desk discomfort eases while you keep at it. Stretching does not prevent injury, fix posture or improve sleep.

The four findings, with their sources. None of them is a study of Otter Stretch; the app is a way to do it every day.

Your body stays on the phone.

Otter Stretch follows your position with the camera. Video never leaves your phone.

No account, no sign-in, no sync, by decision. Your position is read on the phone by Apple’s own Vision framework, and your history is a file the app keeps for itself. The app sends anonymous usage counts, which you can switch off, and nothing else unless you choose to send a session.